“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew soothingly. “I guess you’re all right at
anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in Blair’s store at Carmody that you was
the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid progress. ‘Rapid progress’
was his very words. There’s them as runs down Teddy Phillips and says he ain’t
much of a teacher, but I guess he’s all right.”
Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was “all right.”
“I’m sure I’d get on better with geometry if only he wouldn’t change the
letters,” complained Anne. “I learn the proposition off by heart and then he
draws it on the blackboard and puts different letters from what are in the book
and I get all mixed up. I don’t think a teacher should take such a mean
advantage, do you? We’re studying agriculture now and I’ve found out at last
what makes the roads red. It’s a great comfort. I wonder how Marilla and Mrs.
Lynde are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Lynde says Canada is going to the dogs the
way things are being run at Ottawa and that it’s an awful warning to the electors.
She says if women were allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change.
What way do you vote, Matthew?”
“Conservative,” said Matthew promptly. To vote Conservative was part of
Matthew’s religion.
“Then I’m Conservative too,” said Anne decidedly. “I’m glad because Gil—
because some of the boys in school are Grits. I guess Mr. Phillips is a Grit too
because Prissy Andrews’s father is one, and Ruby Gillis says that when a man is
courting he always has to agree with the girl’s mother in religion and her father
in politics. Is that true, Matthew?”
“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew.
“Did you ever go courting, Matthew?”
“Well now, no, I dunno’s I ever did,” said Matthew, who had certainly never
thought of such a thing in his whole existence.
Anne reflected with her chin in her hands.
“It must be rather interesting, don’t you think, Matthew? Ruby Gillis says
when she grows up she’s going to have ever so many beaus on the string and
have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too exciting. I’d rather
have just one in his right mind. But Ruby Gillis knows a great deal about such
matters because she has so many big sisters, and Mrs. Lynde says the Gillis girls
have gone off like hot cakes. Mr. Phillips goes up to see Prissy Andrews nearly
every evening. He says it is to help her with her lessons but Miranda Sloane is
studying for Queen’s too, and I should think she needed help a lot more than
Prissy because she’s ever so much stupider, but he never goes to help her in the